The Things We Hide
by made-in-wonder
Summary: Angstshipping. AU, written for fanfic50 and au abc on LJ. What we think we want and the truth aren't always the same thing.


**Disclaimer**: Yugioh isn't mine. I didn't even manage to see the movie.

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"So let me get this straight," said Malik, his face studiously blank. Ryou huddled on the bed, Malik's blanket wrapped around a torso normally concealed, safe behind thick sweaters and layered T-shirts. "Ever since you started switching high schools, you've been masquerading as a boy."

Ryou nodded wordlessly, trying not to let her lips tremble. The worst had finally happened, she realized. Nobody would be her friend anymore. Why did that hurt, when she'd wanted it this whole time?

"P-please don't tell anyone, Malik-kun," she mumbled, tears bubbling up between lashes she now realized had always been suspiciously feminine. "I don't want them to be upset I lied..."

"It's you who's the most upset by this." Malik reached over, yanked the blanket from Ryou's body; she squeaked and toppled over onto the bed, binding across her chest coming loose, bare stomach pale and rounded in a distinctly un-masculine way. "What's so wrong with being a girl?"

"You like being a boy..." Ryou mumbled, feeling exposed and stupid and ashamed. If only she could have kept people away from her, then no one else would have gotten hurt! But Malik wasn't afraid of the Ring. Malik wasn't afraid of anything. "You've talked down about women...don't hate me."

"I hate the lie more than I hate your gender. Move over."

She felt the bed buckle as he climbed on too, could hear his clothes rustling as he approached her where she lay; she buried her face in the sheets and waited, heart pounding, to be exposed. But it didn't come. He loomed over her – she could feel him there, looking down at her, his body so close and her heart beating so fast, she really had been interested, Malik-kun, that much hadn't been a lie, but it could never happen because she was a she and she had lied-

A tender hand stroked her side, and Ryou yelped; getting her head to snap out of the tiny ball of fear she'd rolled into was all the leeway Malik needed to lean down and press a kiss against her lips. She felt a shock, a horrible cold...and then a warmth rushing in, as her brain realized what was happening, as she slowly wrapped her mind around the impossible coming true. Malik...Malik was really, actually...

Her lashes, gummy with earlier frightened tears, stuck together as her eyes flickered shut; she remembered faintly, as she felt his lips slowly begin to work against her own, to at least itry/i to kiss him back. She was really doing it, she realized. She was really kissing a boy. That had never happened before.

She was kissing _Malik_. And he'd kissed her first.

Ryou shifted, uncomfortable. She'd watched all the other girls gossip about who'd kissed whom, who'd gone a little farther, about whom no one was allowed to speak again because they'd gone _too_ far – she'd watched from a distance, a boy, the boy no one would ever expect of wanting to kiss anybody, a boy who probably liked other boys, who changed in the bathroom stall instead of the locker room. She'd wanted the isolation. She'd gotten it. They were all safe from her, so long as no one came too close.

But it'd hurt, too...to see other boys occasionally look at her and smile, to feel horribly guilty that she wasn't what they thought, to see boys and girls or boys and boys or girls and girls holding hands on the subway, but what was a girl who dressed as a boy...? She hid from the ones who wanted her to be a girl and betrayed the ones who wanted her to be a boy.

What, Malik's kiss asked her, did _she_ want to be?

He was always big on identity, on self-expression, that Malik...

His arms gathered her up off of the bed, exploring her stomach; she gasped at tickling against her bellybutton, at her legs twitching, at her throat drying. "I-I..." She couldn't speak. She couldn't even _think_. Was this what everybody always got so excited about? It was actually kind of scary. "I didn't think you liked-"

"I like _people_," Malik explained flatly, fingers pressing into Ryou's sides, playing her like piano keys, or revving the acceleration on his motorbike; she apparently wasn't much of an engine, as all she could do was give little gasping starts and lean. "But I hate people who hate themselves. Don't be one."

Trembling, Ryou nodded, swallowing. She didn't hate herself, Malik-kun, she wanted to say, but the words had dried up with her throat. Or, well, she did, but not for those reasons, she didn't hide because she hated being a girl. She hated herself for hiding – she always had. Had he...had he known that much, too?

And he couldn't leave well enough alone. That was – Ryou had to giggle in spite of herself, nuzzling into his arm. That was just like a boy. Just like _him_.

Ryou started the next kiss, pink and feminine yet forcefully sure. And this time, it was Malik's turn to shiver.


End file.
